Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste

Amateur drinker and professional tech reporter Bianca Bosker didn't know much about wine - until she stumbled on an alternate universe where taste reigned supreme, a world of master sommeliers who could, after a single sip, identify the grape a bottle was made from, in what year, and where it was produced, within acres. Where she tasted wine, they detected not only complex flavor profiles but entire histories and geographies.

Holy Cow!: An Indian Adventure

After backpacking her way around India, Sarah Macdonald decides she hates the country with a passion. When a beggar at the airport reads her palm and insists she will one day return, and for love, she screams "Never!" and gives the country, and him, the finger.

Wanderlust: A Love Affair with Five Continents

Spanning 15 years of travel, beginning when she is a sophomore in college, Wanderlust documents Elisabeth Eaves’ insatiable hunger for the rush of the unfamiliar and the experience of encountering new people and cultures. Young and independent, she crisscrosses five continents and chases the exotic, both in culture and in romance.

Across seven tales, Haruki Murakami brings his powers of observation to bear on the lives of men who, in their own ways, find themselves alone. Here are vanishing cats and smoky bars, lonely hearts and mysterious women, baseball and the Beatles, woven together to tell stories that speak to us all. Marked by the same wry humor that has defined his entire body of work, in this collection Murakami has crafted another contemporary classic.

So, Anyway...

In this rollicking memoir, So, Anyway..., John Cleese takes listeners on a grand tour of his ascent in the entertainment world, from his humble beginnings in a sleepy English town and his early comedic days at Cambridge University (with future Python partner Graham Chapman) to the founding of the landmark comedy troupe that would propel him to worldwide renown.

The Soul of a Chef: The Journey Toward Perfection

In his second in-depth foray into the world of professional cooking, Michael Ruhlman journeys into the heart of the profession. Observing the rigorous Certified Master Chef exam at the Culinary Institute of America, the most influential cooking school in the country, Ruhlman enters the lives and kitchens of rising star Michael Symon and the renowned Thomas Keller of the French Laundry. This fascinating audiobook will satisfy any listener's hunger for knowledge about cooking and food, the secrets of successful chefs, at what point cooking becomes an art form, and more.

The Last Season

Destined to become a classic of adventure literature, The Last Season examines the extraordinary life of legendary backcountry ranger Randy Morgenson and his mysterious disappearance in California's unforgiving Sierra Nevada - mountains as perilous as they are beautiful. Eric Blehm's masterful work is a gripping detective story interwoven with the riveting biography of a complicated, original, and wholly fascinating man.

White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America

In White Trash, Nancy Isenberg upends assumptions about America's supposedly class-free society. Poor whites were central to the rise of the Republican Party in the early 19th century, and the Civil War itself was fought over class issues nearly as much as it was fought over slavery. Reconstruction pitted poor white trash against newly freed slaves, which factored in the rise of eugenics. These poor were at the heart of New Deal reforms and LBJ's Great Society; they haunt us in reality TV shows like Here Comes Honey Boo Boo and Duck Dynasty.

The Wonder Trail: True Stories from Los Angeles to the End of the World

Steve Hely, writer for The Office and American Dad!, and recipient of the Thurber Prize for American Humor, presents a travel book about his journey through Central and South America. Part travel book, part pop history, part comic memoir, Hely's writing will make listeners want to reach for their backpacks and hiking boots.

Apocrypha Now

Mark Russell & Shannon Wheeler's faithful yet irreverent approach to the Bible made their book God Is Disappointed in You a modern cult classic. Now, by popular demand, they turn their attention to the best parts left out of the canonical Bible, including the Midrash, the Apocrypha, Gnostic Gospels, and more! And if you thought the Bible had some weird stuff in it....

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

The prolific, perennially best selling author recounts his early life and writing struggles, gives advice on the crucial aspects of the writing art, and talks about his much-publicized, near-fatal accident.

The Great Railway Bazaar

The Great Railway Bazaar is Paul Theroux's account of his epic journey by rail through Asia. Filled with evocative names of legendary train routes - the Direct-Orient Express, the Khyber Pass Local, the Delhi Mail from Jaipur, the Golden Arrow to Kuala Lumpur, the Hikari Super Express to Kyoto, and the Trans-Siberian Express - it describes the many places, cultures, sights and sounds he experienced and the fascinating people he met.

Game of Thorns: The Inside Story of Hillary Clinton's Failed Campaign and Donald Trump's Winning Strategy

Here is the first insider account of the precipitous fall of Hillary Clinton. How the scandals of a lifetime finally reached critical mass. How, in the last few days of the campaign, some on her staff saw the ghostly shroud of defeat creeping over them but were helpless to act, frozen by the self-denial of the group.

Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel

Vagabonding is about taking time off from your normal life - from six weeks to four months to two years - to discover and experience the world on your own terms. Veteran shoestring traveler Rolf Potts shows how anyone armed with an independent spirit can achieve the dream of extended overseas travel.

Spaceman: An Astronaut's Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to find yourself strapped to a giant rocket that's about to go from zero to 17,500 miles per hour? Or to look back on Earth from outer space and see the surprisingly precise line between day and night? Or to stand in front of the Hubble Space Telescope, wondering if the emergency repair you're about to make will inadvertently ruin humankind's chance to unlock the universe's secrets? Mike Massimino has been there, and in Spaceman he puts you inside the suit.

The Exotic Booze Club

At seven years old, the young Brian Armstrong was captivated by the pages of an old, yellow-bordered magazine. It wasn't just the bare-breasted tribeswomen that attracted his attention. Pictures of far-off jungles, exotic wildlife, and intrepid explorers prompted the boy to declare, "That's what I'm going to do when I grow up." Twenty-five years later, that dream came true. The boy from Bendigo found himself travelling from one death-defying adventure to another as a seat-of-the-pants expedition filmmaker for the same company that produced those yellow-bordered magazines.

The Nordic Theory of Everything: In Search of a Better Life

Moving to America in 2008, Finnish journalist Anu Partanen quickly went from confident, successful professional to wary, self-doubting mess. She found that navigating the basics of everyday life - from buying a cell phone and filing taxes to education and childcare - was much more complicated and stressful than anything she encountered in her homeland. At first she attributed her crippling anxiety to the difficulty of adapting to a freewheeling new culture. But as she got to know Americans better, she discovered they shared her deep apprehension.

Lunar Discovery: Discovery Series, Book 1

What lies on the dark side of the moon could change the course of humanity forever. When a Chinese rover discovers an alien technology on the dark side of the moon, it is up to Richard "Rock" Crandon and his NASA team of scientists and engineers to devise a way to return before the Chinese and Russians. Forced to deal with bureaucratic oversight and a complex team of personalities, Rock Crandon pushes his team to their limits.

Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World

This history of popular entertainment takes a long-zoom approach, contending that the pursuit of novelty and wonder is a powerful driver of world-shaping technological change. Steven Johnson argues that throughout history, the cutting edge of innovation has lain wherever people have been working the hardest to keep themselves and others amused.

Shadow of the Silk Road

Out of the heart of China into the mountains of Central Asia, across Northern Afghanistan and the plains of Iran into Kurdish Turkey, Colin Thubron undertakes a journey along the greatest land route on earth: the Silk Road. Travelling 7,000 miles in eight months, he traces the passage not only of trade and armies, but of ideas, religions and inventions.

Visit Sunny Chernobyl: And Other Adventures in the World's Most Polluted Places

For most of us, traveling means visiting the most beautiful places on Earth - Paris, the Taj Mahal, the Grand Canyon. It’s rare to book a plane ticket to visit the lifeless moonscape of Canada’s oil sand strip mines, or to seek out the Chinese city of Linfen, legendary as the most polluted in the world. But in Visit Sunny Chernobyl, Andrew Blackwell embraces a different kind of travel, taking a jaunt through the most gruesomely polluted places on Earth.

Incendiary: The Psychiatrist, the Mad Bomber, and the Invention of Criminal Profiling

Long before the specter of terrorism haunted the public imagination, a serial bomber stalked the streets of 1950s New York. The race to catch him would give birth to a new science called criminal profiling. Grand Central, Penn Station, Radio City Music Hall - for almost two decades, no place was safe from the man who signed his anonymous letters "FP" and left his lethal devices in phone booths, storage lockers, even tucked into the plush seats of movie theaters.

What the F: What Swearing Reveals About Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves

Nearly everyone swears - whether it's over a few too many drinks, in reaction to a stubbed toe, or in flagrante delicto. And yet we sit idly by as words are banned from television and censored in books. We insist that people excise profanity from their vocabularies, and we punish children for yelling the very same dirty words that we'll mutter in relief seconds after they fall asleep. Swearing, it seems, is an intimate part of us that we have decided to selectively deny.

Lost on Planet China

When the travel bug bit, J. Maarten Troost took on the world's most populous and intriguing nation. As Troost relates his gonzo adventure - dodging deadly drivers in Shanghai, eating yak in Tibet, deciphering restaurant menus (offering local favorites such as cattle penis with garlic), and visiting with Chairman Mao (still dead) - he reveals a vast, complex country on the brink of transformation that will soon shape the way we all work, live, and think.

Creativity: The imagination to write about places you never actually visit

Resourcefulness: Utilizing persuasion, seduction, and threats, when necessary, to secure a place to stay for the evening once your pitiable advance has been (mis)spent

Resilience: determination to overcome setbacks such as bankruptcy, disillusionment, and an ill-fated one-night stand with an Austrian flight attendant

As Kohnstamm comes to personal terms with each of these job requirements, he unveils the underside of the travel industry and its often-harrowing effect on writers, travelers, and the destinations themselves. Moreover, he invites us into his world of compromising and scandalous situations in one of the most exciting countries as he races against an impossible deadline.

after a brief interesting period of author's introspection, I could not plod through the self indulgent narcissism re drugs, alcohol and women to get to whatever there is in this sorry excuse for a book about travel writing. No stars if possible

This narrator is terrible. It sounds like one of those programs that reads the text on a computer. After 15 minutes I had to return the book because it was that bad. Too bad, it sounded like an interesting book.